26 September 2017
First of all, get a house, and a woman and an ox // for the plough – a slave woman and not a wife, to follow the // oxen as well – and make everything ready at home, so that you // may not have to ask of another, and he refuses you, and so, // because you are in lack, the season pass by and your work come to // nothing. Do not put your work off till to-morrow and the day // after; for a sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor one who // puts off his work: industry makes work go well, but a man who // putts off work is always at hand-grips with ruin.
Works and Days, 405-413. c. 700 BC.
[Lycurgus] commanded that all gold and sliver coin should be called in, and that only a sort of money made of iron should be current, a great weight and quantity of which was but very little worth; so that to lay up twenty of thirty pounds there was required a pretty large closet, and, to remove it, nothing less than a yoke of oxen. … For the iron money could not be carried into the rest of Greece, nor had it any value there, but was rather held in ridicule.
Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus (early 2nd century AD), about the semi-mythic Spartan lawgiver
Lydian electrum (gold-silver alloy) coin, late 7th - early 6th century BC
Ephesos, Ionia, electrum Hekte or sixth stater, c.625-600 BC. Privately issued by one "Phanes"
(Top) 5th century BC; (bottom) 2nd century BC
A "lifetime" tetradrachma of Alexander III, Babylon mint, c.325-323 BC. Head of Herakles on obverse, Zeus seated on reverse "*alexandrou basileos"
A posthumus tetradrachma of Alexander III, Mesembria mint, c.100-65 BC. Head of Herakles on obverse, Zeus seated on reverse.
Silver tetradrachma of King Areus I of Lakedaimonia (Sparta), Laconia mint, c.267-265 BC. Head of Herakles on obverse, Zeus seated on reverse "basileos areos"
Overstriking can tell us the relative chronology of coin issues (and thus rulers, states, etc)
4th-3rd century BC silver drachma, Abydos countermark (helmeted bust of Artemis on obverse; eagle with ABY on reverse) on an older issue (bust of Artemis wearing mural crown on obverse, eagle with wings outstretched with ABY on reverse)
Bilingual Silver drachma of Menander "Soter" (c.150-130 BC), Pushkalavati mint. Draped bust on obverse "basileos soteros menandrou" (Greek), Athena on reverse "Maharajasa tratarasa Menamdrasa" (Prakrit)
He spread Greek rule to its greatest extent in India conquering as far as the Ganges. He converted to Buddhism, and is only Indo_Greek king remembered in Indian literary sources